Most fireplace doors made today use tempered glass. Most wood stoves made today use neoceram glass or something similar. With my fireplace doors you have a choice.

Neocram glass is a product of space and rocket technology and it can withstand tempratures of almost 1500 Farenheit. However the temperature rating isn't the important thing. The important thing about neoceram is that it is extremely thermal shock resistant. This is demonstrated with this picture, which shows a piece of neoceram glass held horizontally. The glass is heated with a torch from underneath so that it is so hot that it is glowing bright yellow, and then water is poured on the top at the same time. This is an extreme thermal shock treatment and the neoceram glass comes through unscathed over and over. Tempered glass, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to tolerate a blow torch heating the center for even a couple of second before shattering, you wouldn't have a chance to pour water on it at the same time, but if you could it wouldn't tolerate that either.

Neoceram glass is also highly resistant to physical shock. In order to pass the UL test for woodstoves the window is subject to a hammer treatment in which a two pound steel ball suspended on a pendulum is dropped against the glass. I don't recall the height of the drop, but it's like hitting the glass pretty hard with a hammer.

Tempered glass is equally resistant to physical shock as long as it isn't hit on the edge.

Neoceram glass is also expensive, so the question is: Do you need it on your fireplace doors?

If your fireplace doors burns gas logs instead of wood or if they burn wood but are not heating units then you don't really need neoceram glass. if your fireplace doors are heating units but you aren't planning on using them a lot then you can get by with tempered glass. If your fireplace doors are going to be used frequently for serious heating then it would be best to get neoceram. If you like the idea of having the best and don't mind paying a little more for some extra insurance then neoceram is the way to go.

There are many variables. I have made many heating doorsets that have tempered glass and glass breakage is very rare but it has happened. I made one doorset that had tempered glass and it was used 24 hours a day to heat a large house and the tempered glass broke within the first two weeks. I have never had neoceram glass break in a fireplace doorset, but I used to make a lot of woodstoves and I had a few pieces of neoceram break in them, but it was after some years of service, and woodstoves put a lot more stress on the glass than a fireplace doorset does. Also, in most cases the glass broke because someone tried to shut the door against a piece of wood that wouldn't go all the way in. Very few of them broke though. Consider the following: each woodstove or insert that we made had one or more neoceram windows but hardly any of them had fans and many of the fans were used sporadically. In spite of this we ended up replacing many more fans than pieces of neoceram.

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